


In the Case of Archery

by Chaifootsteps



Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Alien Biology, Bottom skekMal, Drug Use, Explicit Consent, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaifootsteps/pseuds/Chaifootsteps
Summary: On the evening of the Skeksis' 200th birthday celebration, an increasingly disenchanted skekMal takes off into the night. Fortunately, he's not the only one.
Relationships: skekMal/urVa (Dark Crystal)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	In the Case of Archery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryanglitter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanglitter/gifts).



> Who in turn dedicates this to his friend skekMal.

“Why, Hunter! Whatever could _possibly_ be the matter?”

“Nothing," lied skekMal through his teeth. "Nothing whatsoever.”

“Oh, come now,” said skekEkt, who smelled strongly of fruit, and who seemed to be having just a bit of trouble staying upright in his chair. “If that frown of yours extends any further, it will wrap around the back of your head. So let's hear it. Is the music too grating? Did a Gelfling say something to offend you? No? Bone caught in your teeth? Fat in your throat? Surely it's not the drink, is it?”

“The drink is _fine_ , Ornamentalist,” skekMal replied. And then, because it was true, “The best I ever tasted.”

On the whole, there were precious few things skekMal needed in his life less than a self-congratulatory Skeksis function. Harvest festivals he liked well enough, as they drew in Gelfling from afar and gave them all something tangible to talk about. Dances and feasts, fair enough, if only for the undeniable fact that skekAyuk's repasts were legendary.

The dedications, however. The speeches, the naming ceremonies, the seemingly endless parade of summits...

But it wasn't every day that the Castle lordship turned 200 trine. And so it was that skekMal donned his cleanest cloak and joined his compatriots in celebrating themselves for being born.

And now here he was, rather regretting doing so.

And skekEkt was smiling far, far too knowingly.

“I think I know what the problem is." SkekMal's most immediate thought was to dread the sound of whatever cunning conclusion skekEkt had reached leaving his beak, but the Ornamentalist simply gave his shoulder a sloppy, indulging pat. “Well, never you mind. It's his loss, and I'm sure whatever sovereignly business he's up to can't compare to your delightful company. In fact, I'll go so far as to guess--”

“Oh, crawlie dumplie!” That, mercifully, was the Gourmand, waddling his way closer, red-faced and wearing more ruffles and layers than the pastry he'd created that was one of the showpieces of the evening. “So that's where you've gone off to!”

“ _Darling!_ ” skekEkt shrieked, turning to greet him so enthusiastically, it sent his drink sloshing from his cup, narrowly missing skekMal's foot. “I was just consoling our poor, dear Hunter. That dreadful, heartless Emperor's gone and left him bereft _yet again_ \--”

“You leave the Hunter alone. If you'd like to tend to someone bereft and alone, let's start with me. You owe me several dances.” Like a candle being snuffed and a lantern lit in its place, skekMal watched his problems fall away from the Ornamentalist's queue of concerns. One moment skekEkt was beside him, and the next he was in the Gourmand's arms, the two of them blushing and cooing and rubbing beaks like the next Conjunction was nigh.

“Oh, skekMal, I do hope you won't take offense--”

“Off with you now, Ornamentalist. Make good on those dances.”

And away they went, stumbling and giggling like sentimental Gelfling. SkekMal sighed with deepest relief, and drained his drink to the dregs.

The Ornamentalist, as was so often the case when it came to matters not ornamental, was thoroughly wrong in his read on him. If it were really as simple as the fact that skekSo had been scarce all evening, there would have been no problem to speak of. SkekMal was as capable of mingling as anyone, as capable of entertaining himself as anyone, and as capable of dancing with a flushed, laughing skekTek as anyone.

The problem was all of it.

The problem was that it hadn't been like this the last time.

The last time, 100 trine ago, now _that_ had been a party. It had been opulent, of course, stuffed with as many rare jewels and fabrics as skekEkt could fashion into outfits and decorations, and gluttonous as a nebrie's haunch, with rich food and drink being rolled out for days on end...but there was a sense of wild abandon to it, back then. The Path-Breaker's expeditions had cast their net of alliances far, and it was no exaggeration to say that they'd invited every sentient being they could reach on the face of Thra, packing them into the Castle, then the castle exterior, then in tents dotting the fields and riverbanks like colorful blooming flowers, in a great, glorious, apolitical sprawl that disregarded such trivial notions as class and species.

Back then, every day had begun early and ended scandalously late. He and skekSa had grappled and wrestled for the amusement of the tent-going crowds, then joined them in drinking on the grass. Even the Podling serving staff had worked in shifts so as to be able to join the festivities. And each night, after the last colorful, dancing pyre of flame had been thrown up to signal the day's official end, the Skeksis had crept into the locked chambers for a writhing, decadent celebration of flesh the likes of which even their hedonistic natures had never before conceived.

This time around, in this post-Gruenak conflict world, things were very different. Now the clans were more than just distinctions, more than just a name and a hair color and what kind of hors d'ouevre they preferred... _now_ they had the All-Maudra, and skekSo was intent on courting them like the future of his empire depended on it.

And yes, true enough, the Podlings were still there, still dancing with Stonewood and Spriton. If skekMal had truly wanted to, he supposed nothing was stopping him from going out and joining them...

Podlings and Spritons were creatures of tradition after all.

Maybe, he wondered as he rose, just maybe, it would feel the same.

***

It was nowhere near the same.

SkekMal would take it anyway.

The outdoor revelers had scattered when they first saw him standing about the firelight, but of course, that was forgivable, given that they were full of drink and he was wearing an assortment of large knives. A young Stonewood had intervened to apologize on what seemed pure reflex, which skekMal had waved aside. Taking a seat, he had deposited an entire pan of rare roast mushrooms commandeered from the Maudra's table, ornamental bowl and all.

“If I hear one more Gelfling address me as 'Noblest hunter', I'll eat my own head. Come now, shift yourselves. Tell me something real about the world out there.”

For a moment, they all stood around blinking at him. Then an older Spriton stepped forward, plopped alongside him without ceremony, and took up an entire handful of mushrooms.

“Something real, old sir? I'll tell _you_ something real. My _children_ have run off to the sea. Five children, all grown, and their mothers and I never laid a hand on them all their lives. See, we own a scraping of land out by the Dark Wood. Never laid a hand on them, never asked a thing of them but to care for us when we got old and crooked. And let me tell you something that you won't believe...”

That seemed to solve the dilemma. The partygoers fell upon his peace offering like Z'nids upon a Nurloc nursery, flocking around him, hungry to air their grievances – first petty, then less so – to someone in a position to do something about it.

The droughts that had been plaguing the plains for the past few growing seasons. The Skeksis' increasingly apparent favoring of the Vapra, and although they insisted they didn't need it, their apathy towards the Podlings. Talk of this new tithing notion.

“It will never happen,” skekMal assured them. “Talk flies, but no one's going to demand anything from you. Where would that get us? It'll be the same as it's always been; you give us any extras you've got lying around, we'll look after you in return.”

They really warmed to him, then. Started wishing him a happy birthday, bringing him little bits and pieces and Gelfling-sized cups, and speaking of their parents that were at the last Skeksis' birthday function. They devoured his stories of the forest, and skekMal began to think that even if the atmosphere wasn't as free or jovial as the last time, this whole evening might not have been a wash after all...

And then skekZok came looking for him.

The Ritual-Master tugged on his arm, beckoning him back to the castle, assuring him it was urgent. The moment they were away from the tents, however...

“SkekMal,what could you possibly be thinking? Carousing with drunken Podlings, stealing tidbits from the Maudra's table? You can be seen from the balcony, I'll have you know!”

“I was thinking it was our party, and if I want to spend it out on the grass, so be it,” skekMal replied dryly. “I'm also thinking you may want to take your hand off me before I tear it off.”

SkekZok did so, paling slightly. A pragmatic Skeksis by design and an occasionally diplomatic one by necessity, he'd always had a solid track record when it came to picking his battles. “Of course you can spend it however you like. I didn't mean that. It's just that this new political framework the Emperor is attempting to lay down is still very delicate. The Gelflings' expectations are changing.”

“I could not give nine shakes. If skekSo's plan to get higher and mightier with the Gelfling falls apart because I let them teach me a plowing song, he needs a better plan.”

“I know how you feel. Believe me. I _do_ know,” and that much was true. SkekMal may have been the first to bed the Emperor, but no one knew him quite like skekZok. “He's been worrying himself sleepless over this night. You know how he frets over the loose nature of our arrangement with the Gelfling. The old generation is dying out, and the new one won't be pacified by memories of the time before.”

“And you know that none of this would have been necessary if he'd established even _a halfway decent system of trade._ ”

They could have argued all night over whose fault it was that he had not, and skekZok knew it, and skirted the issue altogether. “He doesn't expect you to become a mirror image of us. Just...come inside, catch up with the other Skeksis. Let the Gelfling fawn over you a little.” He paused, shy of the door. Looked at the Hunter with those piercing eyes, as sincere as they could hope to be. If it were only his authority as Ritual-Master on the line, only skekSo's idiotic whims, skekMal would already be back among the campfires, louder than before.

This too, skekZok knew.

“Please, skekMal. Do it for him.”

***

Ultimately, skekMal made it through six more dances, three more drinks, and four more wealthy Gelfling stopping just shy of offering their own firstborns in exchange for his favor. He caught a glimpse of skekSo only once, crossing from one room to the next with one of the Maudras close at his side.

SkekOk invited him to join the others for a short “Lords-only” party game in the loftiest rooms of the castle, and though he declined, he learned via the Scroll-Keeper that the Cantor would shortly be unveiling a new composition -- ostensibly to honor 200 trine well-lived, but if the snippet of lyrics skekOk gushed over were any indication, mostly about the glory of the Skeksis and the clans they believed deserved it.

SkekMal did not linger long enough to hear the real thing. 

He never looked back, and could not say what it was about this that felt the most freeing of all.

***

Drunk on the night air, on his own rebellion, he ran until he could no longer hear or see the Castle. The Hunter had no particular plans in mind as to where he was headed to, and indeed relished in this. Anywhere that was not the Castle...anywhere he could not smell perfume, or taste it on the wind.

When the scent of Feeciba surprised him like a strain of much beloved music, it was, if not the answer he'd been looking for, a very fair substitute. He wasn't in the slightest bit hungry, still quite full of skekAyuk's rich cooking, but Feeciba was a favorite of his and the thought of eating something dark and oily with his hands called out to him more than any pit in his belly could have.

He found a small herd of them grazing outside of their burrows, wooly and tame, and selected the youngest looking one as much for the challenge of catching it as anything. It had nearly vanished down the hole in the sand when he caught it by the leg, dragging it kicking into the moonlight, dodging its back spines expertly before silencing its bleats forever.

For a moment, he contemplated eating it raw. It would certainly have been the antithesis of the night. But then too, so would the sight of grease dripping over a fire.

_'Compromise,'_ he thought, slicking the abdomen and reaching in for the heart. _'That's the key. Compromise.'_

As he sat there chewing it in silence, he began to feel at last somewhat like himself. After all, it is difficult to be unhappy about anything whilst eating fresh Fecciba, and the grass was dewy and sweet, the night quiet and still...and then, just when he was working himself up to the thought of standing and getting to work cooking, another scent reached him.

Fire, from very far away.

Pipe weed and stone and fresh, floral tea.

Gathering up his kill, skekMal went.

***

The Archer had made camp on a hill overlooking a valley, and sure enough, he was sharpening arrowheads with a rounded rock and a piece of bone, smoking a pipe while his water boiled for tea. SkekMal remained crouched in the woods, eyes fixed on him, seeing how long he could last before...

“Good evening, Hunter. Can I offer you something hot to drink?”

Not long, then, but longer than the old days, when even he had to admit he crashed about so carelessly that any half-deaf Nebrie could hear him coming. He slunk out, Feeciba lolling in hand, and gave an obligatory huff as he took a seat by the fire.

“You're getting complacent, old Mystic. One day, I'll be on top of you before you know what's hit you.”

“I certainly hope not,” urVa replied a tad too lightly. Then, pointing at the carcass... “You're not going to bleed that, I take it?”

“It's fine.”

“Ahh. Well, I suppose you can do whatever you like on your day of creation.”

SkekMal watched him resume shaping his arrowheads frustratingly sharp with his primitive tools, the only ones he insisted he needed. Little snaps to barb the edges, like a Peeper Beetle cleaning its feet, _snap, snap, snap._ Smooth, precise strokes over the rounded tip. He'd felt the heat of them more times than he had trine to his name, when he grew too bold with his trophies, but also as of late, whenever the Archer wanted to show him something. He truly hoped it wouldn't become a habit.

“Well, come on, out with it.”

“Hm?”

“Something about Skeksis decadence and self-aggrandizement and why I'm not at the celebration.”

“SkekMal...in all our 200 trine, have I ever looked down upon you where Skeksis decadence was concerned?” SkekMal felt as though if he _truly_ combed through his memory, he could find an example, and vowed to do so later, but for the moment, he simply glared. “Anyhow, I recall the last one. A wonderful celebration of life, and of Thra. In more welcoming circumstances, I would have attended this one as well.”

SkekMal picked up a stick and prodded the edge of urVa's fire until it leapt. “You're hardly missing anything. Silly, vapid nonsense, putting on airs with the Gelfling, eating off of cutlery...”

“Cutlery? How terrible.”

“It's all gas is what it is. Hah, thought it might be worthwhile in the end if the Mariner were to show up, but _she's_ off sailing around the continent. Always talked about claiming a real piece of land for herself before we turned 100, did, but now it's not enough, oh no, now she's got to name one after her favorite Gelfling...”

“Well...you know my thoughts on naming the land.”

“Which is why the next virgin forest I discover is getting named for you.”

“Yes, yes. I know.” SkekMal wondered if he shouldn't aim higher, threaten a mountain or a Gelfling burial ground, or if urVa would simply brush it off with the same insufferable patience. “Anyhow, I apologize for my rude interruption.”

“It's a tragedy is what it is. And do you know what I'd venture as far as to say? It's against nature. It's not like Skeksis to have to simper and scheme for their meals. If they want to ally with the Gelfing, feather their beds and stack their plates with things the Gelfling give them, and sleep easy because the Castle is full of Gelfling guards, that's one thing.”

“Not unlike your teaming together with them for the hunt's sake.”

“ _Yes!_ Yes, exactly! There's no shame in working with smaller creatures, not if it's for the sake of a noble goal. I can even grant that some creatures are meant to lead softer lives. But is that the best they can do with the life they've been given? The fangs and talons, the senses of smell and sight and taste? Preen and allow fat to grow around their middles? _Bah!_ ” He pitched the stick into the fire, sending up a protesting flurry of ash. For the first time since he'd sat, urVa looked up at him sympathetically. “It's all _wrong._ It hasn't been the same since...”

Slowly, urVa nodded. “We needed her more than we could have known.”

SkekMal did not reply, and setting his pipe and tools aside, urVa quietly commenced making tea. The Hunter simply watched, and when urVa held out a cup to him, he took it without fuss or commentary. They sat, sipping on the fragrant, floral, heady evening blend in silence, warming their hands around the red fired clay.

“I'm sorry your party was unpleasant,” urVa said at last.

“Hm.”

“...If it's any consolation, the urRu once celebrated too.”

SkekMal looked up from his cup, a barb about urRus celebrating by fasting and bathing in dirt on the tip of his tongue, but something in urVa's long face made him reconsider it.

“Oh yes. Not in the same grandiose fashion, of course, but a celebration nonetheless. We gathered everything we could think of that we all liked to eat, and urAmaj allowed us to help him chop and peel. UrUtt wanted to make flower crowns and garlands, but didn't want to sacrifice the flowers to do it, so instead, he simply painted us in bright, beautiful colors, then led us to the most flower laden corner of the forest he knew of. We gamboled, swam, laughed and danced...UrAc told stories, and that got us telling stories. And throughout all of it, urSol led us in songs that lasted long into the night.”

“Did your also end in an orgy?”

UrVa chuckled. “Every now and then, someone would disappear with someone else. But in the end, no. We all collapsed into the grass together and had a long, deep, wonderful sleep.  
  


SkekMal regarded him in the firelight, trying to paint a picture in his mind of the urRu laughing and singing without reservation, their long, lithe bodies covered in color. Of urVa, asleep in a field of flowers.

“...So then, why aren't you there now?”

UrVa swirled his cup, as though weighing how much to tell him. SkekMal was surprised he had spoken as much as he had. “...UrSu...has arrived at the conclusion that drinking, dancing, and carrying on is a temptation best left for our dark halves. That Thra is the only thing worth celebrating, and that we do each day we live simply and unobtrusively, without disrupting it.”

“Bitter old longface.”

“He's right, of course.”

SkekMal, for the most part, tended to find it uproariously funny anytime anything unfortunate befell urVa. From their first meeting, the Archer had always possessed what seemed an undue amount of natural skill at everything he did, and skekMal had long relished those moments when life failed to go his way.

SkekMal could not find a reason to laugh at this.

“Alright,” he said, slapping his hands on his knees. “Have you got anything stronger than pipe weed lying about?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“To the bottom of a gobble pit with the Mystics. The Skeksis too. We're having our own party, and I know for a fact you've a taste for meat you don't indulge in as often as you should. So if you've got anything stores away you've been saving for a special occasion, get it out, and I'll do the same.”

UrVa blinked.

What an accomplishment it was – always was – to see him lost for words.

“...There _is s_ omething I received as a gift from the Dousan some time a ago...”

***

SkekMal was no skekAyuk and didn't want to be, but if there was one thing he knew his way around that wasn't tracking and killing game, it was a campfire supper. Feeciba benefit from long cooking or none at all, but skekMal had been carting around a bit of cured nebrie fat, and wrapped in a mixture of this and fresh wild herbs, cooked in one of urVa's pans so as to catch its own juices for basting purposes, skekMal's kill was soon done to juicy perfection. UrVa had in a wrapped cloth a selection of wild oat cakes left over from that morning's breakfast, just right for soaking up the juices, and coupled with the flask of strong wine skekMal liked to keep on hand for cold nights, they managed to scrape together a triumphant supper.

(SkekMal thought, but did not say, that urVa made a... _compelling_ sight when he was chewing on a roast leg, tongue occasionally slipping from his mouth to lick up a morsel or patch of grease, eyes lit up with forbidden pleasure.)

After the meal, they lounged in the grass and sampled urVa's special blend. It was a strong, unfamiliar scent, closer to the incense burned at the Castle than the mellow, grassy offering they often shared, but it went down as smooth as honey, and it wasn't long until skekMal's talons and toes began to drift in and out of existence.

And like they always did when the herb was good and they couldn't find a reason to argue, they began to talk.

“You don't believe that, do you?” asked skekMal. “All that dung about not being worth celebrating?”

“UrSu only ever wants what is best for Thra,” answered urVa, laid out on his side, gentle eyes full of skekMal's reflection. “Do you believe all those things your Emperor has been professing? That the Vapra are the most accomplished of clans? That the Skeksis are under constant threat from a thousand enemies?”

“ _Psht_ , of course not. SkekSo would think the Fizzgigs were out to destroy us if one bit him on the hand.” And then he felt guilty, because skekSo was prissy and paranoid, but he was still the most consistent lover in his life. Still the first one he'd ever felt warm and silly and protective over. “But you can hardly blame him. He's got that panicked rabble to look after, and he had to figure it out all from scratch. S'pose he figured he knew enough when Aughra left to get by without her.”

“Well, at least there's nothing to prevent her from returning. And saving us both the worry.”

SkekMal suddenly found himself wanting to talk about something else. Fortunately, the warm, velvet buzz made it easy.

“I like that we have this.”

“'This?' I agree, of course, but please, humor me by elaborating."

“I don't know. That we get along, more or less. That you're not hidden away with all the others, finding new things to feel wretched about. You're an arrogant spithead who cares about the feelings of beans and snoutlings, but at least you're something.”

UrVa reached out and smoothed a feather from the side of his face. SkekMal didn't protest; they always got a little more tactile when it was like this, a little hungrier to be near each other, and urSu probably would have said it was because they were incomplete beings seeking to be whole, but skekMal knew that was nonsense; the only oneness he and urVa shared was an ability to find good herb.

“You're a remarkable creature, skekMal. You drive me to endless frustration, but I'd mourn if you were anyone else.”

SkekMal, in a way that felt like the most casual and inevitable thing in the world, nudged the Archer onto his back and settled on top of him, nosing into his short, cream colored mane. UrVa's hands settled around him, neither treating this as any great revelation, because even without the influence of herb, it was impossible to say if it was.

“...Your oatcakes are getting better.”

“...Thank you.”

***

Time trickled and slipped, and soon, skekMal found himself able to perceive it normally again. The dozy, rose-colored fog ebbed, and like the end of a long, wonderful day, skekMal simply found himself content and satisfied.

“What time do you think it is?” he asked, too warm and light to want to look up and take stock of the positions of the moons. UrVa did so instead, glancing past his shoulder.

“Sometime past midnight. Still a ways shy of the dawn.”

“Too late to wish one another a happy 200th birthday, then.”

“Ah, but a happy one it was, just the same. Thank you for sharing it with me. And your gift of wine and unbled meat.”

“Keep doing that,” skekMal replied, referring to the slow, languid massage of urVa's fingers through the feathers of his neck and shoulders, “and we'll call it even.”

UrVa chortled, and complied.

It was all he could do not to groan. UrVa's fingers may have been calloused as shale, but they were gentle and strong and sure. Perhaps more to the point, they knew skekMal's body almost as well as they knew their own...every knot and sore muscle, every shared scar. For all the warning shots they had fired in skekMal's hissing, spitting, cursing direction, they had also wrapped his wounds and lit his pipe for him. They'd been the ones to pull him from the river on that day when they were very young, and skekMal possessed more hunting drive than common sense, and slapped the breath back into his lungs even as they'd both hovered on the cusp of blacking out.

And polite.

So polite, those hands, lingering on the small of his back, but always, always gliding back up to settle behind is head.

As though skekMal truly would have objected if they'd traveled anywhere else.

The thought came to him like urVa had come to him all those trine ago, like similar thoughts always did...simply there, where a moment ago, it had not been. And this time, for the first time, the decision to act upon it was not some far-fetched thing, but a new path cut into the wood, right there before him.

He leaned up and, unsure as to how a mouthing on the neck would have been received, nibbled beneath the Archer's jaw.

UrVa froze.

“SkekMal,” he said gentle, without weight or embellishment, and impossible to read. SkekMal, rather than trying, bit him again. “ _SkekMal._ ”

This time skekMal pulled back enough to look him in the eye, and couldn't say for certain what the emotion he found gazing back was. Stern? Apologetic? “No to the biting? Or no to this? I can accept either.”

UrVa's eyes darted. Lovely, wooden brown. Reluctant?

“...We can talk about it at a later time. When you haven't been smoking.”

SkekMal paused...and then burst into wild, rasping laughter.

“Is that what you're worried about?” It wasn't especially funny in and of itself, but the look on urVa's _face_. It was the same look of concern he got whenever he rescued Thra's small, hopping citizens from the busy trade roads. Did he have to be such a Mystic all the time? “By the Crystal, Archer! Your Dousan grass _wasn't_ that strong!”

Then a distinct note of embarrassment flashed across that solemn face, which was even better. “It was strong _enough._ I would cut my hands off before touching you while you're judgment is clouded.”

“My judgment is perfect.” SkekMal sat up on him, straightening out his feathers and putting on the big Skeksis voice, rather pleased that the answer hadn't been a flat out no. “Archer. _UrVa_. I am swearing to you on my honor, on the hunt itself, that my head is clear as day. Is yours? If so, then we're wondrous.”

Slowly, delightfully so, urVa's hands crept up again. Two on skekMal's hips, the others on his legs. “...Why now?”

Why?

“Because,” he replied. “You're the only being the face of this planet that I can truly speak to.”

That, it seemed, was enough.

Like a dam under intense pressure, urVa pulled him close with every limb he possessed, distributing his name across skekMal's neck, warming lush blue feathers with it as those four hands plunged beneath his furs and set to work mapping out every hitherto unexplored plane and dip of his body; small breasts, strange ribcage, the knobs of spine; hard, lean muscle, and the soft, thin skin just beneath the base of the tail. He squeezed his rear so hard that skekMal hissed, and then stroked the bruised flesh in an apology.

Even breaking like a dam under pressure, urVa couldn't hurt a fly.

Neither had any frame of reference for how the other's race behaved in moments of passion, and nothing about their current position was bringing them any closer to knowing. SkekMal tried to rub his beak against the side of urVa's long muzzle, which the Archer must have mistaken for something else, because he countered with a lick under skekMal's chin. UrVa hummed a low, rumbling note over his chest, which he sheepishly stopped as he realized skekMal was staring at him with confusion. Eventually, they tripped and stumbled into a series of clumsy headbutts and forehead rubs, more ruffled by the minute.

“Do you have a preference?” urVa asked breathlessly, unfastening his light hunting cloak and throwing it as far from the fire as he could aim. “Any particular of yours is fine with me.”

SkekMal shimmied out of the last of his garments, settled back down and rocked his slits eagerly against urVa's short, sandy fur. He didn't have to mull it over long; the Skeksis were forever tripping over themselves in their haste to flash their vents at him, and he could think of nothing less satisfying than falling into bed with his urRu, Thra help him, the only creature in the cosmos he could be himself with, only to do the same thing he always did. “Inside me. You're equipped for that, aren't you?”

UrVa smiled slowly. “May I make a small request first?”

“What is it?”

“Lay down.”

SkekMal did so. They'd always shared in the opinion that the grass was as good a bed as any,

Something about the sight of him spread out must have done something to the urRu, because everything slowed down after that. UrVa looked him over with a mixture of hunger and sincere, rapt fascination before descending on him the way skekMal always imagined the Mystics descending on their food; slowly, lingeringly, but with a sense of hunger that refused to be concealed. His mouth, skekMal knew, was a prey animal's mouth – full of broad, flat teeth that fell out every 40 trine or so and were replaced by new ones; his tongue long and smooth, the kind that experience told him would probably taste excellent boiled and marinated.

And now, as it would happen, soft against his chest and nipples.

The bare, sensitive expanse of his belly, where no feathers covered.

The top juncture of his thighs.

_His...oh Crystal, his..._

“I'd always heard,” urVa mused, licking a wandering spiral around skekMal's top slit, letting his hot breath fan the wet, emerging tips, “that you had three of yourselves. I remember when it was a scandalous rumor. Now it's common knowledge.”

“Because Podlings can't keep a secret. And Aughra doesn't.”

UrVa chuckled, and took him into his mouth, and it was remarkable how quickly he stopped thinking of Aughra.

SkekMal, being uninterested in Gelfling, had only tawdry rumors to go by when it came to the tales of what their mouths could do. Soft, wet, suckling little mouths, with plump lips to curl over their teeth and small tongues to work over lengths. SkekSa was a staunch endorser of it, as was skekNa, but skekMal had never had any reason to expand his horizons beyond what a Skeksis tongue could do for him.

That is...

“ _Oh_ ,” he whispered, swallowing hard. “ _Oh_...”

“Do you like it?” urVa questioned, and skekMal nodded because he couldn't find the words, and then urVa was on him again.

Warm, soft, wet suction. Big tongue lapping and slurping at his heads and up the shafts, then back down again. The deep, heavy vibration of his moans. The pop when he pulled off.

It seemed such an exquisitely cruel thing to do, giving him a taste and then exposing him to the night air like that (even if he didn't exactly mind serving as urVa's personal tasting menu), but no sooner had the heat pulled away and the Archer's rough, wonderful hands were on him one again. One to stroke him off, two to rest on his belly, one to part the folds of his vent wide, exposing him completely to--

“ _AH! AH, THRA!_ ”

He felt urVa smile.

SkekMal was no stranger to the myriad of ways one could eat a vent. Even if the Castle Skeksis preferred his members, they possessed no shortage of enthusiasm when it came to delving just below. SkekMal had had his vent licked from the front, from behind, tied up or left free, in groups of twos or threes and that one memorable five--

And never...

_Never_ had he experienced anything quite like urVa's tongue.

“You're absolutely delicious, skekMal,” said the Archer, not pulling back, so that skekMal could feel the hot weight of his breath. “I could devour you all day.”

Quick, flickering laps. Big, slow strokes.

Back and forth.

Testing what he liked best.

SkekMal certainly _did not_ whimper.

Where Skeksis tongues were quick and nimble, there was a fullness, a weight behind urVa's tongue that made being lapped by him an exercise in pure, sweet anticipation. Always teasing at him, putting pressure on him, hinting at the possibility, the _inevitability_ of entering him. Making skekMal think about being full of urVa's tongue, and the unhappy reality that he wasn't. UrVa could have been forgiven if the pace his hand had fallen into around skekMal's erections had faltered, but it never did, and skekMal was only somewhat mortified at the realization that those noises he was currently hearing were being made by him.

“ _Ahh, ahh...oh, skreesh...Thra, Archer...”_

“Mmmm...”

“ _Ah~hh! Be the death of me_...”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

SkekMal's talons were at a loss as to where they should be put; the primary ones finally settled on tangling up in the Mystic's silken mane while the secondary scrabbled at the dirt. He could feel his tail beginning to jump, sooner than he would have liked but as long as he could hope to put off with urVa stimulating him, and he knew it was coming, he knew the second that tongue got inside him, he was going to fall apart, he was going to _scream_...

UrVa's tongue pressed up inside him.

And skekMal screamed.

He had to. Couldn't _not_. Not when he was so full, so wet, and that strange new tongue was lap, lap, lapping the sensitive spot where his vent met his cocks and dripping all over urVa's hands and mouth and his own thighs and surely the secret to peace and wholeness and life itself wasn't fusion, it was seven minutes of Mystic tongue--

“ _Thra, don't stop, please don't stop, oh sweet Crystal, Archer...”_

UrVa stroked his nipples.

He could feel it as it started to build, an overboiling pressure pot of sweet fire. A wall of solid white bearing down on him, promising to take the place of his thoughts, higher and otherwise. His grip on the urRu's mane tightened well past what had to be the point of pain, anything, _anything_ to keep himself grounded. So much, he was full of so very much, he was drowning in it, _no more, can't take it, stop, urVa, keep going, please neverevereverstopohThraohThra--!_

A well-placed flick to one of his right nipples. A long, smooth stroke of the tongue, rippling impossibly deep.

Gratefully, skekMal succumbed with a will to the fire, the pressure, and the sensation of sheer, delicious, blinding white...and if he was gripping urVa too hard, it was only to keep himself tethered to the ground.

Several dozen trine later, when at last he could open his eyes once more, his first welcome-home sight was the largest Sister peering voyeuristically through the tree canopy. The second, upon lifting his head, was urVa, smiling softly between his legs.

“...What?” panted the Hunter.

“Nothing. Nothing.” Ugh, that smile. The furthest thing from smug, and in the process, the smuggest thing. “...I'm certain whomever's living down in the Valley didn't need that sleep anyhow.”

SkekMal let his head fall back.

Dry Mystic teasing notwithstanding, the warmth of urVa sidling up alongside him was a welcome one, and skekMal reached blindly for more of it. He was not left wanting, bundled up quickly into four powerful arms, held close to the fine, silken chest.

“You're a beautiful sight, skekMal,” urVa rumbled in a voice as warm as his embrace. “Thank you for trusting me enough to share that with you.”

SkekMal grumbled the remnants of something that fell apart and died between his brain and his beak. If he'd been a Castle Skeksis, it would have been no question of his falling asleep on the spot.

But skekMal was _not_ a Castle Skeksis, thank you very much, and could do better. And _would._

“I hope you don't think me finished for the night.”

“Oh, no. I know you far better than that.”

“Too right you do. There's not another Mystic alive who can claim to have seen Skeksis bits. You get to know the great secret of mine, I get to know yours.”

UrVa pulled back.

It wasn't the first, second, or even the 20th time they'd encountered one another in the flesh, even if one didn't count the first Conjunction. They'd both been freshly split, they'd both pranced around the woods naked as the day they divided. They'd shared the same swimming holes. UrVa had long known that he possessed a small slit, a bigger one, and a third beneath his tail; skekMal had known he had a sheath, a slit beneath, another beneath his tail, and two breasts roughly the size and in the same location as his own.

(He'd also known that when the urRu slept, sometimes said sheath pulled back just enough to reveal a flared head. But that was neither here nor there.)

What he hadn't been prepared for was the _size._ Not as thick as skekSa, unless she held the whole trio together, but a good bit longer for sure.

What he'd been even _less_ prepared for was the small, tapered, flexible protrusion of firm flesh, pale pink in contrast to the mottled shaft it emerged over. Right in the middle of skekMal puzzling over the matter, it took the opportunity to reach for him, sending him jumping backwards as his feathers flared to their limit.

UrVa, as always, was the picture of patience. “We call it a grasper.”

“It's not going to strike me on the hand, is it?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“What's it even _for?_ ”

“Would you like me to tell you? Or would you like me to show--”

“No.”

UrVa rubbed his muzzle, and seemed to be calling on some measure of strength to avoid laughing. “It's just a secondary phallus. It's meant for long, languid interludes. The urRu enjoy lying together in contemplation and appreciation of one another's company, our graspers tangled together. It's all very gentle, I assure you.”

SkekMal's feathers, traitorous cowards that they were, refused to do the dignified thing and lie flat. “I'm not _afraid_ of it, if that's what you're implying. But if it looks like a snake, moves like a snake, I intend to treat it as a snake.”

“SkekMal, I've seen the way you treat snakes. I'm willing to explore a great deal of possibilities if they're with you, but I'm afraid I draw the line at you treating my grasper the way you treat snakes.”

SkekMal, undeterred, reached for it, and finally got a hand around the thing. And then it held him back, and no, no, not happening, there went the feathers. And this time, urVa laughed loud and long.

“ _Teeth! Talons! What is the matter with you Mystics?”_

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry!” He turned his head, the sight of skekMal's blown feathers seemingly stymieing any progress towards calming himself. “...Alright. Yes, I am sorry. If it would make you more comfortable, you can mount me. Or I can retract it altogether, if you prefer.”

“...Does it really retract?”

“Yes. Quite easily.”

“...And you really do enjoy them.”

“I've always found them pleasurable. Even when it's just my own.”

Curse him. Curse him and his inquisitive nature, and curse urVa for being so alluring. “Alright. _Alright!_ It's not your little...grasping hand that I'm interested in. But this is a special occasion and you've yet to lead me astray so far. I'll sample whatever you've got.”

UrVa smiled at him. A warm, grateful, affectionate smile.

“Let me just fetch some oil.”

***

Once again, skekMal spread out like an offering.

Stretched flat on his back, this time on urVa's bedroll. The largest Sister further to the right, and half obscured by clouds.

UrVa resting between his legs, big and warm and solid. His strange genitalia resting close to skekMal's own.

It was an oddly mesmerizing sight, and perhaps just a little intimidating, but urVa made no move to insert either into him. Even when he leaned in to hover over him, caging and covering him, it was only to lick his neck, to nuzzle into his feathers. Large hands stroked him, caressed him from the curve of his hip to the curve of his face, all accomplished with the same slow, mindful pace the Mystics were known for. In spite of it all, skekMal felt nothing but safe.

“I'm no virgin, Archer,” skekMal reminded him, albeit without any heat to speak of.

“I know,” urVa replied. “Indulge me, skekMal. It's been a long time coming.”

SkekMal didn't bother to pick that apart, but merely folded his arms around the Archer's lithe, solid body, skimming palms over rises and fall of muscle. The world around them chirped, whined, and hummed, and he fell back, trusting, into the liminal intimacy of it; his legs on either side of urVa, the Mystic resting hard against him, but not entering.

When the soft, tapered touch dipped between his folds, he gasped, but no more. As it turned out, not seeing it truly did make a world of difference.

“Alright?” urVa said in a low voice, almost a whisper.

“Fine. Good,” skekMal answered. Sighed into his new lover's shoulder as the grasper roamed his entrance like a clever finger. “This is really enough to satisfy you, then? This little thing?”

“It can be. It's a different experience when both partners have a grasper...but if I were seeking to bring you to climax, for example? I might thrust slow and shallow. I might insert it into you, then crook it upwards...it's very useful for massaging the Meeting of Travelers.” By way of demonstration, he tickled the top wall of skekMal's vent, making his erections jump as his vent and face flushed with equal measures of heat. “It's a very slow building of pleasure. It certainly isn't something one enjoys doing every day. But if you have the patience for it, having your innermost passage slowly, slowly massaged, so that the pleasure builds little by little, like the fall of rain filling a dry, deep lake...at the end, your reward is a climax that transcends your body. You truly do see stars and planets.”

SkekMal, for his part, did not have such patience. Certainly not tonight.

“Alright,” he half gasped, half moaned, rocking back on the grasper to meet its shallow, wet thrusts into his heat. “Then what about the big one?”

“Oh, that's for breeding.”

It was said with a matter-of-factness that, for just a moment, took skekMal's breath away.

“ _T-tell me about it..._ ”

“The urRu have a complicated relationship with our organs,” urVa continued conversationally, tweaking a nipple. “We used to couple...not quite as openly or often as you do, but close. While the grasper is seen as closer to spiritual, the organ is all about pleasure. Nothing transcendent or spiritual about it, at least not as far as urSu sees things. Not even capable of bringing about new life...not for us. Just a tool to be inserted, and a place to receive it. ”

“Archer, I swear by own blade--”

“Just simple, ephemeral sensation. The act of taking, of being taken, of parting flesh and entering, intruding on another, and all of it loud, generous and gluttonous. Pure bliss for bliss's sake. Is that what you want, skekMal? To be taken right now?”

“Of course it is!”

“Then tell me, skekMal. If it pleases you.”

The Hunter mouthed his shoulder, trembling and senseless. “Take me. Fill me. Don't you understand it, I _trust_ you. You're the only one that makes sense anymore. Just take care of me, just let me **have this**...”

Without a moment of further hesitation, urVa withdrew the grasper with a wet, fluid motion. SkekMal hadn't even seen when he poured the warm oil into his secondary hands, to say nothing of when he began to slick it over himself, but the next thing he knew, urVa's flared tip was just past his soaking entrance, backed by the gentlest of pressure.

“Ready?”

“ _Yes! Yes, of course!”_

Inwards, slowly, but the breath caught hard and sharp in skekMal's chest just the same. UrVa had prepared him with the thought in mind that this wasn't going to hurt at all, and it didn't, but _by the Crystal,_ nothing in his life had ever compared with that much s _tretch._ If they were connected at the level of their souls, then why on Thra did it feel like they were so incompatible down there? Shouldn't this have been effortless?

UrVa, mercy of mercies, entered at a crawling pace, even as his own shoulders went barrel-tight with tension. SkekMal felt it on his own cocks, the fine, fine line between exquisite pressure and too tight to be comfortable, but there was something to knowing simply by knowing urVa that it was not purely for the sake of his own comfort that the Archer continued to inch in and out so painstakingly, pausing now and then to add more oil.

And then, after what seemed like hours, but was most likely only minutes...

UrVa's thighs resting flush against his hindquarters, and the Archer's careful mouth and tongue soothing the side of his neck.

“Well done,” he praised skekMal. Or himself, a little, maybe. Both of them.

SkekMal butted beneath his chin, where the scent of him was strongest, and grinned, sharp and happy.

“Now _take_ me.”

Once skekMal's body had accommodated, there was nothing holding either of them back from what skekMal was increasingly certain they should have been doing long ago. The pounding of urVa's skin on his skin was, if not the missing piece skekMal had been looking for, the closest anything had ever come to. If the grasper's careful manipulation of his delicate inner passage was on par with a string instrument being lovingly and meticulously plucked, urVa's larger phallus was the steady, even pounding of a drum. Nerves skekMal hadn't even known he possessed were coming alight with each motion, curling his talons and melting up his spine.

(He couldn't help but run a metaphorical hand around the bottom of the metaphorical box that was his own being, attempting to gauge whether urVa's pleasure came through as freely as his pain. For a moment, he thought he felt it, a strange peripheral glimpse of it, and then it was gone, leaving him to wonder later.)

And then, almost as gratifying as the sensations themselves, there was the look on the Archer's face. A fleeting grasping control, an awed sense of wonder that had him flushing, but mostly a burning, ravenous hunger. SkekMal leaned into it as one might lean into the heat of a fire.

“Does it please you, Archer? To take me like a Skeksis?”

“As much as it pleased you to be pleasured like a Mystic.”

SkekMal nipped him on the side of the neck, and urVa let him, trusting his hunter's teeth. When he lifted skekMal's hips higher, changing his angle to one that filled his vision with stars and wrung choked moans from his beak, skekMal didn't know whether it was a small revenge or making good on his promise to care for him.

“Beautiful,” breathed urVa, watching the expressions play across his face with an intensity that made skekMal want to, all at once, hide and spread his legs wider. “You're astonishing, skekMal.”

SkekMal answered with a feeble hiss, and by winding his tail around urVa's leg. UrVa mouthed his neck with his blunt teeth, so it seemed the sentiment had not escaped him.

The urRu's hands were never still, never leaving him; sometimes caressing him like there was nowhere else they would have rather been, sometimes stroking his cocks or rubbing his nipples or generally disrupting his efforts to make this last as long as possible, but always doing something for him, always drinking him in. SkekMal wondered, in a way he hadn't since he was less than a trine old and just figuring all of this coupling business out, if he should have been doing the same...something, _anything_ other than hooking all four sets of his talons into urVa and hanging on for dear life.

“It's alright,” the Archer rumbled. “It's more than alright.”

SkekMal set his teeth hard, so that when his voice came out a soft keen, it was at least somewhat muffled...a token effort, further and further by the second from the concern over keeping up appearances around urVa.

_He could destroy you,_ whispered skekMal's brain, as urVa's heavy hips rolled between his legs.

_He could put an arrow in your heart and call it the greater good,_ as a well-aimed thrust caused his voice to rise and sputter, and urVa placed all his focus on causing that spot to be hit again.

_With a single shard of Crystal, he could force you back. He could force all of them back. SkekSa never to feel the waves again, skekEkt and skekAyuk never to see one another again. **SkekSo**._

_...But he won't._

_Never him._

The sounds of it, faster and faster, loud and wet under their shared gasps and pants, how wet he _had_ to be to take him all in, and the rush of pure heat as he thought of becoming wetter still, of the Archer losing control and filling him, climaxing because of him...

So good. So close.

_Safe_ to let himself be filled so much, to let himself be taken care of.

Safe to love this so much.

Safe because the Archer could have so easily been like the others, and wasn't.

“ _UrVa.” W_ et breath, wet patch on neck and shoulder. “ _UrVa..._ ”

“Let me know, skekMal,” the urRu gasped in a voice thick with faltering control, clutching at frayed ends not for pride's sake, but for skekMal's. “Whatever you need...”

SkekMal cupped the long face between his claws, looked into those forest brown eyes, and from the precipice of pleasure, choked out the last coherent words he would say for some time.

“ _Ruin me.”_

***

UrVa didn't, of course.

Not in the way skekMal would have expected him to, had he made the same request of someone like skekSa. Too gentle to leave him _really_ hurting the next day, too sentimental to tint their first time red.

SkekMal might have been disappointed, had that been what he was asking for.

“ _SkekMal,” the Archer said, as soft as the Hunter had ever heard him. Passing impossibly gentle hands over skekMal's breathless, trembling, spent body, soothing tense muscles and places gripped too tight. “My skekMal.”_

No...urVa could never ruin him.

Would never.

And yet, already had.

***

“...Answer me one thing, Archer.”

“Just the one?”

It had never occurred to skekMal in the minutes before he fell asleep in urVa's arms that the Archer might not be there when he awoke. It was his camp, after all...and even at his most petty, it was unlike urVa to dismantle the entire camp around skekMal's sleeping form just to spite him.

Still, it had been heartening to wake up to a face full of his mane. And if he'd woken up sorer than he'd been in a very long time, urVa's offering of hot tea and eggs – carefully candled for inviability – made up for it.

Dressed in nothing more than a spare blanket and his usual severe look, skekMal tapped his fork on the rim of his plate. “Yesterday, when we were talking about Skeksis functions, you said that you would have attended 'this one as well.' Are you going to enlighten me as to what you meant?”

And urVa smiled, like he was not wearing skekMal's claw and teeth marks over his person the way Dousan wore bones and beads.

Like he was not wearing only half a traveling garment, or sitting with his teacup doing little to obscure his sheath.

Like a Mystic.

“Well, I should think it was obvious. The cloak I wore to the last one no longer fit.”


End file.
